Earned Citizenship through Military Service

This chapter uses the civic republican tradition as a theoretical lens to examine how previously excluded groups were able to draw on their wartime service to demand equal treatment as citizens and why unauthorized immigrants should be able to earn naturalization through military service. It first considers how Mexican American veterans were able to leverage their military service to demand the rights and benefits of first-class citizenship. It then interprets this historical account through a frame of “Mexican American republicanism,” connecting loyalty and service to citizenship claims. Unauthorized immigrants who want to follow this pathway to citizenship can no longer do so, given current barriers to enlistment. This chapter closes by analyzing and critiquing U.S. policies governing immigrant military enlistment. As a whole, this chapter serves as a work of applied political theory with implications for the contemporary U.S. immigration reform debate.